We could stick with cheaper graphics and reusable assets while focusing on stories and designs.

I wish we could. But there isn’t evidence that anyone can make a living doing that. The handful of mega hits that people use as examples of successful cheap games isn’t that evidence, it’s just anecdotes.

Instead my hope is that as AI can automate much of the work and raise the quality floor of the parts that aren’t unique, the parts we actually don’t care about but expect to be there, that it’ll start being possible to spend half a year, a year on something, and then earn the equivalent of half a year or a year’s salary in sales, and have also made something that is actually able to speak for itself, to show the unique part without the jank and missing features dictating the conversation.